About 11 or 12 years ago I worked for the CSU book project for about a year and a half. There had been a flood in Ft. Collins when the river flooded mostly from water from further up the canyon. The library at CSU flooded and many books were ruined--1000s, maybe 100,000s. Each book had to be evaluated, and it had to be determined if part of the book was salvagable (sp?) and if pages could be replaced. If pages could be replaced and the book repaired, the copies of those pages were made by other libraries and then sent to the CSU book project where one aspect of the process was to take the bad pages out and replace them with the new pages.
Anyway, I said all that to talk about how people around the building (2 floors of a condemned dorm) communicated. The main people carried walkie talkies. The phrase that could be heard the most often was, "Where you at?" The lack of good grammar was a thorn in my ears and my brain. I guess it took too long to say, "Where are you?" Actually, I think mostly people didn't even think about the correct sentence.
In my own home, my husband and son play an online game together. They defeat aliens, destroy ships and planets and save the world regulary. From the living room I can't really hear distinctly what they are saying to each other (their computers are in separate bedrooms, but the doors are often open). But what I do hear very distinctly is, "Where you at?" I've tried to teach them the error of their ways, but alas they are stubborn. And I think they like to irritate me (surely not).
I guess...not certain, but I guess that if this is the worst thing to bother me, I've got a pretty easy life. Truthfully it's not the worst thing to bother me, but it may be in the top ten!!
